How Pilates healed my P.E. trauma

there goes your social life

Today I want to write about exercise.

in a wild turn of events, this is my happy place

I have never been athletic. Growing up, I didn’t play any sports. To this day, I don’t follow sports or understand how they work. And I’ve always carried a lot of what I call “P.E. trauma” from being the slow kid in P.E. I’d pretend to be sick or injured as often as possible so I didn’t have to participate. And I felt so inferior to the other kids who seemed to effortlessly know how to play all the games, and loved to compete and sweat and win. I couldn’t do any of it and it was a nightmare.

Clueless was my favorite movie growing up, and I adored this scene where the popular girls were all lazy in P.E.

When you grow up in Dallas and you don’t play or follow sports…you’re the odd one out. And even now, I feel uncomfortable in groups of people watching or talking about sports because I quite literally have no idea what is going on. For me, watching sports is like staring at a movie in a foreign language with no subtitles.

When I was younger I pretended I was “too cool” to care about sports. But that was always a lie. The truth is, I felt left out. I envy naturally athletic people and sports fans. I wish I was part of it, I wish I could break in. I just don’t even know how to start, and I’m intimidated by the whole thing.

A little over a year ago, on what ended up being the day before Nana passed away, a friend who knew I was super stressed out invited me to a Sculpt class. It was at 5pm at a fitness studio a mile from my house that I’d never noticed before. She told me she went all the time and loved it. I was in such a state of grief and anxiety that I said yes even though nothing about it sounded appealing to me.

When I showed up she had already saved me a spot in the front row, right between her and her wife. She’d gotten the weights all set up for me and everything. I was so freaked out. The front row?! Right between them!? I felt so exposed and vulnerable and certain that everyone in the class would immediately see what a weak, inexperienced, non-athletic loser I am. It felt like P.E. all over again.